It came as little surprise to those following the Impact's pre-season camp closely, but today the club officially announced that 38-year-old talisman Eduardo Sebrango has signed on to play in Montreal's inaugural MLS season.

Sebrango has been a legendary figure in North American D2 over the past 13 seasons, racking up important goals and winning championships with three different teams. That he will finally play in the top tier past his 39th-birthday is just another chapter added to Sebrango's storied career.
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This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of posts, dedicated to sharing stories from fans of Canadian soccer about how they came to follow their country and/or local club, and what it means to them. We're told soccer is wildly popular in Canada -- but too often, that means people who play but don't watch, or those who exclusively follow foreign clubs or national teams. While that's all well and good, it's not the same as being a Canadian soccer fan.

To find out how you can be a part of this series and add your voice to the Support Local Soccer movement, see the end of this post. But for the first edition, I'll tell you about a friend of mine and how, in mere months, she went from being a footie neophyte to a full-fledged Canadian supporter.
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Former Montreal Impact goalkeeper Andrew Weber is a contestant on popular American reality television program The Amazing Race

Weber played parts of two seasons with the Impact, making 29 appearances. It was the most successful run of his career thus far.

The Austin, Texas native is currently at camp with the Seattle Sounders. He made two appearances for San Jose last season.

On the program, which is a race around the world, Weber is partnered with his twin brother. The show debuted last night and can be seen in Canada on CTV on Sunday nights.
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Dwayne De Rosario is still not a DP. One year removed from the contract dispute that ultimately forced his move out of Toronto, the man from the mean streets of Malvern is still looking for the symbolism and respect that the DP status brings.

He says it’s not about the money. It’s possible he’s telling the truth as his $500,000 salary in 2011 equalled that of some of the lower paid DPs already. And with a MVP award now on the books, combined with his two playoff MVP awards, it is hard to argue that point.

If Mustapha Jarju can be a DP, why shouldn’t DeRo?

Or, to put it in a way that DeRo might, if Julian de Guzman can be a DP...

Putting aside how much de Guzman is underrated by many in the TFC community, you can understand how it would irk De Rosario to make four times less the money that his national team teammate does.

As always the problem remains the same. DC United understand DeRo is a valuable player, but they are reluctant to hang the DP label on him. They already have two and adding a third would require the club to spend a $250,000 luxury tax on top of the money they are giving DeRo.

So, United is doing the same thing that Toronto tried to do – it’s attempting to piece together enough allocation to give him a raise, but so he remains under a standard contract.

Publically, both sides say that negotiations are going well. Maybe that’s true. They must be going better than they were in Toronto because DeRo hasn’t gone on any unauthorized Scottish adventures this year. He didn’t hide his displeasure with Toronto, but one wonders how much longer he’s going to remain happy in DC.

History tells us not long.
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Toronto FC fans are not planning a parade based on last night’s 5-1 victory over the University of South Florida.

On a related note, Toronto sports fans are also not parading through the streets in celebration of the Leafs beating Edmonton Wednesday night, nor for the Raptors almost beating the Lakers (it’s a rough year for hoops fans).

No one thinks the Reds are going to win the MLS Cup, the Leafs the Stanley Cup or the Raptors another quarter this year. Torontonians are not even sure about the lacrosse team, the Rock, and they’re actually good.

Yet, the fans in this city are constantly being accused of being hopelessly naive dreamers. Whenever something good happens to a Toronto team you can bet there will be 50 cynical “plan the parade” jokes made within seconds. Many are from parts of the country that are inclined to relish in Toronto’s perceived arrogance and undeniable struggles in professional sports.

Many others, however, are snipping from the 416 and 905 area codes. It seems that no one hates Toronto sports as much as the Toronto sports fan.
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Every few weeks we bring you "MLS Back Catalogue", where AFTN revisits artists' discographies, authors' bibliographies and different genres, re-imagined with the current and recent players and managers of Major League Soccer.

And all done in a full 'Top of the Pops' style top ten countdown.

We thought we'd go all literary this week and have our first author's MLS Back Catalogue, today featuring the works of William Shakespeare….

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(10) A Midsummer Wes Knight's Dream
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TFC’s march to the 2012 MLS Cup began in style tonight, with a 5-1 whitewashing of the Powerhouse University of South Florida.

Ok, maybe not quite, but scoring five goals against live opposition should not be completely ignored. Let’s recall that this wasn’t the first time TFC has played USF. The Preki Reds struggled to a 1-0 win in the 2010 pre-season.

You can bet that if that result was duplicated tonight that there would be full-on panic amongst some of the more excitable within the fandom.

The star of the night was first round draft pick Luis Silva, who had a brace inside 20 minutes. He added two assists to lay further claim to a starting position in the surprisingly loaded TFC midfield.

Far be it for CSN to suggest that he is a pre-season favourite to be a Rookie of the Year candidate.
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Eddie Johnson, the man that scored the first ever MLS goal in Canada, has been claimed by the Montreal Impact with the club's allocation selection.

Johnson won't be learning French, however. The Impact announced that they had already agreed to trade the US international to another MLS side. That club was expected to be Colorado, however the Seattle Sounders ended up getting the player.

The Sounders sent forward Mike Fucito and midfielder Lamar Neagle to the Impact.

By selecting Johnson, Montreal moves to the No 19 spot in the allocation order

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File this one under “show me don’t tell me”, but MLS executives are saying that the league plans to get tough on players that commit reckless tackles.

MLS’s executive vice president Nelson Rodriguez told Steven Goff that the league’s five-man disciplinary committee will be handing out harsher suspensions to players in 2012. Additionally, the league will suspend players retroactively, even if the call was missed on the field.

Rodriguez said to Goff:
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Yesterday's addition of Barry Robson to Vancouver's squad increased the wealth of talent at Martin Rennie's disposal even further.

Who will be the regular starters? Who will be the bench impact guys? And who will just have to be patient and bide their time?

It's a nice position to be in. I'd rather have too many good players to pick from, than not enough, especially once the injuries and suspensions start to kick in.

The flip side of that though is trying to keep team harmony. Some players will always think they should be in the team or getting more minutes, and some will never be pleased not to be.

As we've been weighing up Whitecaps line ups for the season ahead, it's certainly something we've been thinking about, so we caught up with Martin Rennie this week to find out how he plans to handle this enviable situation.

Just how do you keep such a wealth of talent happy?
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As reported by the Associated Press on Thursday, the Canadian women's national team will be squaring off with #4-ranked Brazil in a friendly on March 24, somewhere in Massachusetts*. The third-party location for the friendly isn't overly unusual, especially for Brazil -- the last time the men's national teams of Canada and Brazil met, in 2008, the game was in Seattle.

(Update, 9:31 a.m. As per WomensSoccerUnited.com, the match will be played at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, which is regrettably still home to MLS's New England Revolution).

It's also not unusual to see Canada and Brazil meet each other in the women's game. They've battled three times in the last 15 months, with each match being tied after 90 minutes. Most recently, Canada claimed gold at the 2011 Pan Am Games in a penalty shootout against a depleted Brazilian side, thanks largely to a stellar performance from goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc. Prior to that, in December 2010, Canada drew Brazil twice in a Four Nations tournament in Sao Paulo, with Christine Sinclair scoring this goal in the 83rd minute of the final game:
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